


Marigold

by UponPaleWings



Series: Sleep deprived works and poems [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Gen, Mild Gore, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:15:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22900828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UponPaleWings/pseuds/UponPaleWings
Summary: Starvation is a slow death, and the journey to it is rife with bottomless holes to which sanity plunges.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: Sleep deprived works and poems [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1646053
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Marigold

The river swept away blood from the fight, rain melting the countenance of fallen soldiers into blurred mockeries of once breathing bodies. Mud sucked at the shoes of barely standing men, the exhaustion that death brings weighing in them to join their fallen brethren on the earth, and just sleep steeping in the tainted puddles near the bodies.

Five they were, the last standing from the hundred sent out, ‘safe’ in the assumption that their numbers would solve any problem they encountered.

Oh, how foolish they were when the leaders urged them faster, sure that the ice melts in northern mountains would not be obstacles for the empire. How foolish they were, when they sat starving at a trapped pass waiting for supplies that would never come, insisting they should stay “just a little longer.” How foolish, when the hungry bellies of strong men made for stupid minds in the wilderness, festering into madness left long enough to steep like stagnant water - a hunger that was alike to the infected wound, never properly cared for.

That hunger was the first excuse they used when men who were brothers killed the other like livestock, and ate of the impure flesh around fires lit by depravity. First one, then four, then twenty, until the fighting over who got to eat and who was eaten sparked a battle that encompassed the remaining battalion.

Five men survived, and look at them now: festooned in the bones of once-brothers, draped in the scarlet of blood stained uniform, staring at each other.

One holding a club made of femur, torn muscle still clinging to the edges.

One has a garrote of intestine, ripped from the stomach of a nearby body.

One has two sharp rocks, blood and grey matter decorating hand and stone alike.

One holds an army knife, faithfully sharp and soaked from slit throats.

And the last, oh the last, the fifth of the bloody and mad, holds in his arms the one person

he ever loved.

Life blood spilling from mortal wounds covers him, and he sits there and mourns for the one person he held more precious than his own life. He grasps for a hand no longer attached to the body, searching for the familiarity of warmth his lover gave him, but only finding a cold emptiness left lacking in his heart. With heavy, exhausted, starving eyes the fifth turns to the four, watching the way they were wary. Looking back to the one who gave him love, the soldier weeps and lays down next to the body.

“Bury me with him,” he sighs quietly. “Bury us together so that I do not part with him again.”

Four men stand among the carnage, wet in the rain and red in the light. One moves suddenly, and with his club he digs. Three men watch as the other claws at the slick mud, and with halting motion they join, stained hands next to stained hearts next to stained minds. The once-men bury their once-brothers, in blue and white snow lilies found by the river bank; laid side by side and clasping hands - one without heart, and the other without mind.

Four men are left to bury them and cry.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! Welcome to my first work on AO3! This is one of many creative works I am hoping to post here, so read on and enjoy. This one's idea came to me in the middle of the night after finals, and I am really proud of the way it came out. If you have any advice for me, comment to your hearts content, but please no flaming. :)


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